I seem to remember the first news I heard about ES6 was a reply of "If we told you about it you'd say the technology doesn't exist" from Todd Howard. They were going to make two games before ES6 and if they told you about ES6 you wouldn't even believe it was possible.

So, now it's just a Fallout76 total conversion mod with the netcode removed so as not to potentially impede TESO sales made indirectly through ES6' lack of co-op. The way Bethsoft shuts down any modders adding co-op to Skyrim is testament to that.

Pretty disappointing. Todd Howard and his lies.

Next we'll hear the technology he was talking about was 8 core mobile CPUs.

That's fun (or paradoxical) we have two newsbits here, coincidentally one posted after another, where one says Microsoft, by buying both inXile and Obsidian, are trying themselves to get some credibility in the RPG medium and among RPG gamers (or at very least, they're pretending to), while another newsbit does inform us that a big studio like Bethesda is willfully wasting a good opportunity to try and regain some credibility, by not changing the way their games are made. Bethesda, heed my warning! What was revolutionary once (in Morrowind times) won't stay forever revolutionary.

To be honest, I don't feel any disappointment or anger towards this annoucement. All I want from Bethesda game is to have pretty graphics and ability to decorate houses - I will pick it up on hefty sale when modders have worked on their magic.

Hard to believe that they wouldn't get a new graphics engine for the new elder scrolls game. I think this is not solid enough yet to be put in stone. Fallout 76 is getting completely destroyed online even by fanboy types (big youtube streamers, many of whom are mega popular) and the game is getting all sorts of bad press…I bet the numbers are going to be pretty bad, even if the first week or two is good, there will be a major drop off as people see how bad it really is (at least according to what youtubers and others are saying)

So with Fallout 76 getting a huge backlash and many technical issues with an ancient game engine, they will probably change their mind and decide to lay out the cash for a new game engine, or be forced to change their mind if the outcry and fans make an uproar and more bad press follows.

Hell, I refuse to believe Bethesda will be that lazy, cheap, and foolish as to keep their old engine for their two biggest most anticipated/most hyped upcoming games.

For me, this is a disappointment. I expected ES to get rid of an immersion breaker. I really do not like the feeling I have of entering a completely different world whenever I enter or exit a building. ES should take inspiration from games like The Witcher.

I spent a lot of time with all Elder Scrolls games since Arena. With exception of Oblivion I think I did not finish any of them. I think I usually got burned out on vastness of each game while its content had rather artificial feeling to me. So perhaps instead of what engine will run it I would be more interested to hear the next game will cover less space and have more living content. Wishful thinking …

"Creation Engine has huge physics problems when running at above 60 FPS, and is playing catch-up with modern game engines in virtually every area that counts."

We already know that statement is completely false, since Skyrim VR currently NEEDS (and does) run at a much higher FPS. Also, this statement is mostly copy/pasted from Forbes, which is not a site most serious gamers would rely on for an educated (gaming) opinion.

I think it's important to point out (again) that just because it's the "Creation Engine", doesn't mean it's going to be the exact same code base, and renderer, and lighting, and physics engine, or what have you, that Morrowind had. Just like the RedEngine will be on it's 4th iteration for Cyberpunk 2077, the Creation Engine is basically on it's next iteration of the Gamebryo engine.

So technically, no it's not a new game engine (Even completely new ones started from scratch will still use some form of similar code base. After all, axis and vectors are requirements for living in the third dimension). But for the average layman gamer, it will be new.

If the complainers here are saying that a new engine needs to be designed from scratch, give a compelling reason. I'm sure there will be theories why, but probably none of them will be based in any good facts or data. Most people here, even the ones with extensive programming experience, have little experience with a modern 3D game engine. This isn't some ray casting engine from the 90s that takes a few hours to code. You think you have problems now with the engine? Creating a brand new one from naught, is just going to give you a whole new set of them.

Very few "new engines" are going to be created from here on out, the amount of code and complexity in them now is just too much. For the most part, it only makes sense to iterate on, build onto, and improve existing ones. People expecting "all new engines" have unrealistic expectations, not only is that pointless work in almost all cases, but it'd slow down game release dates by years. That is why so many games are using Unity now instead of reinventing the wheel. Of course a company could just improve its existing engine and then give it a flashy new name, perhaps that would please some of these people.

Regardless, I see little reason to care about any of these future Bethesda games. If you look at the trajectory of their games post-Morrowind, and even if you want to ignore the Fallout 76 fiasco, it's a pretty sure bet that their next game will barely even be recognizeable as an "RPG".

I think switching to Unity would at least be a change for Bethesda. I would totally support that. It would be something different. Something new. (for those games like elder scrolls)

The truth is these games of Bethesda, especially the Fallout series and to a lesser extent the Elder Scrolls series, are getting ugly. Honestly, they are showing their age like some once big star Hollywood actor who was super good looking in their prime and is now an elderly old man…or a book that was once unmarked, with gleaming white paper and beautiful illustrations and has now become yellowed, illegible, and crumbling with the years. The games are not eye pleasing to look at, to say the least, and look like what they are, ancient technology where they are trying to hold it together with glue and duct tape, and new coats of paint put upon other faded coats of paint to try and disguise all the many flaws and unsightly graphics issues.

If new heavyweight developers like the Witcher series and Cyberpunk developer keep up the pressure and start making first and third person rpgs such as they are doing with the new cyberpunk game but also do that in the fantasy setting with future witcher games, then it would be great and maybe cause Bethesda to have to up their game dramatically in the graphics department!

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
If new heavyweight developers like the Witcher series and Cyberpunk developer keep up the pressure and start making first and third person rpgs such as they are doing with the new cyberpunk game but also do that in the fantasy setting with future witcher games, then it would be great and maybe cause Bethesda to have to up their game dramatically in the graphics department!

I would guess that it helps a lot that game artists make about 1/4th-1/5th as much in Poland as they do in Maryland, so they can hire 4X-5X as many artists, and of course still sell their game for the same price as the game that got made in Maryland.

Originally Posted by Caddy
If the complainers here are saying that a new engine needs to be designed from scratch, give a compelling reason. I'm sure there will be theories why, but probably none of them will be based in any good facts or data. Most people here, even the ones with extensive programming experience, have little experience with a modern 3D game engine. This isn't some ray casting engine from the 90s that takes a few hours to code. You think you have problems now with the engine? Creating a brand new one from naught, is just going to give you a whole new set of them.

At some point you need to start from scratch though. I'm currently (along with a big team obviously) in the process of building a business bank from scratch because it's simply not feasible anymore to keep working on the old legacy code. It's just not possible to upgrade it. Too many years have passed and the technology in use is too old. That goes for all legacy code. At some point it's basically a massive, outdated behemoth where every fix takes days instead of hours.

As for what's missing? Just play The Witcher 3. Fallout 4 was released about six months after The Witcher 3, yet it was years behind it in terms of technology. No amount of modding will fix the fractured world, the lacking facial animations or the broken physics.

Originally Posted by Stingray
I would guess that it helps a lot that game artists make about 1/4th-1/5th as much in Poland as they do in Maryland, so they can hire 4X-5X as many artists, and of course still sell their game for the same price as the game that got made in Maryland.

It could very well be. Economies have all kinds of complicating factors. I am very supportive of CD Project Red, and they should continue making great cutting edge games. If labor costs are cheaper in their home country, so much the better! You have to take any advantage that you can these days among this kind of cut throat competition. This is capitalism, baby. No sob stories will be good enough to stop the competition.

Hell, no wonder China makes so much of our stuff these days, eh? They pay dirt cheap labor costs and no one seems to be boycotting them or these huge corporations practices (such as Amazon) here in America. Funny how that works!

I also want to add that Maylander made a great point. To the silly statement - "There won't be new game engines anymore in the future" Bullcrap! Absolute bull crap…Maylander explained why, and said it very well.

Bethesda can't milk Creation Engine forever.
I know building a new engine is very expensive nowadays, but one would assume that Bethesda would have the resources for that.

Morrowind looked revolutionary, Oblivion almost as much, but from Skirim (first game on CE) onwards their games have started to look like the predecessors, with just small incremental improvements. Now… if they changed at least the gameplay, but the formula has been the same since Oblivion, same strenghts and same flaws.

They really need to renew either the tech or the gameplay, because if their next games will still look, feel, and play like all their other titles since 2006… sooner or later they will be in trouble.

Wow. Very surprised by the timing of this announcement. After a slew of negativity concerning Fallout 76, they pull this stunt…

I can overcome a few glitches if the story and "feel" of the game is awesome, something Skyrim managed. But if they're using the same technology that has some obvious flaws creep up, I'm a little concerned if the tech is gonna detract too much from the story.

Yes, Maylander is correct. You will find that every so often, even very large software projects decide that it is time to start with a fresh codebase (though often keeping bits that don't need re-inventing.) Eventually it's time to get away from old problems that are deeply baked into the design, and to take advantage of more modern techniques. The ID Tech engine, for example, has seen several ground-up rewrites in the period that the Netimmerse engine has been iterated upon at Bethesda.

-- "Orwell was almost exactly wrong in a strange way. He thought the world would end with Big Brother watching us, but it ended with us watching Big Brother." Alan Moore